


come on, you boy-child, you winner and loser

by chlorinetrifluoride



Series: snakes in the water [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 19:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15153836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/chlorinetrifluoride
Summary: It's 1979.Your name is Calypso Shacklebolt, trainee healer, and you are thoroughly tired of delivering bad news to various family members waiting in the St. Mungo's waiting room. Your friend's brother, a young man who sent him a copy of The Wall for his birthday, to whom he never responded, because Regulus was a Death Eater, and Sirius had long since chosen his own side, is now dead. Regulus Black, a student from your own Hogwarts House.The rest is silence. You'll do what you can to calm Sirius down in the interim.Maybe, when all the dust has fallen, you'll allow yourself to cry over the death of one of your housemates. Probably not, though. Weeping brings no one back, and you have so much more work left to do.





	come on, you boy-child, you winner and loser

**Author's Note:**

> meant to upload this piece for this series at some point.  
> insight into how calypso thinks, and also into sirius.

**_march 1979 - cal shacklebolt_ **

death eaters, order members, bystanders, and muggles who have been hit by hexes, you treat them all alike. you do not discriminate. you would not discriminate. when an injured person wanders into the spell damage ward, you do what you can to set them right.

maybe you should kill the ones with the mark on their arm, the ones brazen enough not to cover it before they come here, but you’d go straight to azkaban, and you’d probably only get a single one.

you do a cost-benefit analysis and come up short.

sometimes you apparate to the cemetery in portree to visit leo.

augustine comes with you, and tells him how exams are apparently taking place earlier than usual this year, and how he’d better study up on transfiguration if he wants to graduate, since he was always pants at the subject. it’s a one-sided conversation, but augustine acts as if it isn’t.

you wonder if he’s all right in the head, and figure that he’s probably more right than you are.

you remind augustine that leo has julius with him, and presumably julius will tutor him and set him right.

“you really think there’re really NEWTs where they are, cal?” augustine asks you, wrapping his cloak more tightly around himself.

you stare at the grey headstones surrounding you.

“i think exams, like death, are a universal constant.”

augustine and corona have pretty much moved into your flat, and you’re more glad than you can say to have them around. maybe if you stay together, maybe if you never leave each other’s sights, you’ll never lose each other.

however, one evening, you walk in on far more than you ever wanted to witness in your entire life.

“if you guys wanted to get a lay in, you could have put a sock on the door, or some shit,” you shout at them, cheeks burning, on your way back out the door. “augustine, if i ever catch sight of your naked arse again, i’m hexing you off my balcony!”

you decide that you’ll sleep across three of those easy chairs in the waiting room of st mungo’s tonight, and listen to dilys derwent’s portrait attempt to reassure the people sitting tight until a healer can see them.

(you’ll peel the little red cross off the shoulder of your robes though, lest they think you’re coming to assess any one of them. either that or you’ll sleep in the cafeteria, and make very clear to healer pearson that you are not to be disturbed for the next two hours.)

when you get over yourself, you apparate back to your flat, enlarge your bed to fit two people, and decide to start sleeping on the couch in your parlor.

if they want to take comfort in each other, you won’t interrupt them, and you don’t want to know.

**_july 1979 - cal shacklebolt_ **

you’ve got a bagel in one hand and a wakefulness draught in the other, and are sitting in the cafeteria, about to pour the latter into your cup of chai, when pearson shows up and hands you a file.

you sigh. “what’s the story on this one?”

“bloke tried to kill ‘imself, then there was a duel, and now he’s ‘ere.”

“patch him up and send him to psych.” you pass the sheets of parchment back without looking at them. “i’ve been here sixty-seven bloody hours. i’m on break.”

“i’m already swamped.”

“where in the name of salazar is christophe?” you want to know.

félicien christophe is one of the attending healers, certainly the only reliable one in spell damage, ergo this should not be your problem. or if it is, it should have been his problem first.

“something about an explosion near the ministry.”

“great.”

you down your wakefulness potion without the benefit of tea to make it taste less awful. you school your usual angry expression into one of responsible concern, and stroll into the spell damage ward.

“good afternoon, mister…” you look at the file. then at the bed, at the tosser doped up on analgesic potions, covered in hex burns. the file makes the gentlest of thuds against the tile floor as you drop it.

you scowl once more, and force-feed the man in the bed some dilute wiggenweld potion, good for waking people up. 

“what in the hell are you doing here?” you demand, once he comes to.

“my brother is dead,” he says in monotone.

you cross your arms over your chest. “therefore you decided a family reunion was necessary?”

shacklebolt, you have the most impeccable bedside manner. you are truly a paragon of what this institution stands for. where is your sense of compassion? (probably on vacation, where it tends to be)

you’ve seen too many people die without a choice to have empathy for those who make the conscious decision, particularly in this daft fucker’s case.

bleary-eyed, and still swimming up to his eyeballs in painkillers, sirius black blinks up at you. theoretically you should be mending his broken clavicle, leg, and rib, and treating the vestiges of curses either potter or lupin hit him with to subdue him.

theoretically, you do not give a good flying fuck, not 'till now, anyway.

 _“merlin’s pants,”_ you breathe.

“my brother is dead,” he repeats. “my baby brother.”

you read the file and re-run the diagnostics. along with whatever pearson gave him before you stumbled in here, he’s got alcohol in his system. of course he does.

how could it be any other way? your life has been one twenty-year long cosmic joke.

“the alchemical law of equivalent exchange does not hold any legitimate water, as you probably know. i do hope you actually know this, yes?”

“yes.”

you treat his physical injuries in about three minutes, summon a sheet of parchment, and start drafting the paperwork to transfer him to psych. while you’re bent over him, he takes a tight hold of both your wrists. you drop your quill.

in that moment, you decide you’ll try to summon pearson and demand to swap caseloads before you throttle your patient.

“i failed him. i couldn’t get him out. don’t you understand?” black asks, in a strangled whisper.

you think of the last thing a certain order member ever said to you.

“better than you think, sirius.”

you prise yourself free of his grip, watch as he bursts into tears, and embrace him while he cries, managing not to choke him to death in the process, despite the fleeting impulse.

“i’m sorry,” you murmur, inhaling the smell of ogden’s old coming off his hair. “you know what you have to do, though?”

“what?”

“hold onto your mates, and get the bastard who did it.” you let go of him, pick up your quill, and continue filling out paperwork. “in order to do that, you have to live.”

he nods, numbly.

you chat with him for a while, both of you relaxing just a bit in the process. he consents to drink both a potion to counteract the effects of the alcohol and a calming draught. you prepare them.

when christophe finally manages to get his well-toned ass back to this side of the hospital, you hand him the transfer forms, and tell him you’re going home before you collapse of exhaustion. your final act before clocking out is preparing yet another calming draught, a right strong one.

the only healer you know who could do one better (technically a trainee like you) is probably still running back and forth preparing and administering antidotes in the venoms and poisons ward, and also does not need to know about this at the moment.

you walk out into the waiting room, expecting a member of that gryffindor quartet somewhere, find remus lupin, and foist the goblet on him.

“drink this. healer’s orders.”

“what’s in it?”

“just drink the damn thing so i can go home. you’ll thank me later.”

before he does, he has a question.

“will sirius be alright?”

“despite his best efforts, yes,” you mutter. “drink your potion.”

he complies. 

“good,” you tell him, turning on your heel, and walking away.

you floo back to your flat, and thankfully neither augustine or corona are around, so you don’t have to pretend to be a gracious hostess. you remove your cloak and collapse onto your couch without showering. after two hours of failing to fall asleep or relax, even after dosing yourself with the third calming draught you’ve prepared today, you put your cloak back on.

you apparate to sirius black’s pigsty of a flat and scale the place.

it’s not hard to break in, seeing as remus left the door unlocked in his haste. you grab what you need and apparate back to st. mungo’s. you pass healer christophe on your way to ward six, and he’s surprised to see you.

“thought you clocked out.”

“i did. after this, i’m clocking out again.”

instead of an open ward, the floor for the observation of temporary mental cases consists a series of private rooms (one for each person) that can lock tightly from the outside, so the deranged or psychotic patients can’t try to strangle other deranged or psychotic patients. you gesture to healer talenti to modify the shields at the main door to allow you entry. she waves her wand, and you walk in.

“since when do you work the floor of the damned?” she asks you, in a low whisper.

“since eight seconds ago, and in about three minutes, i won’t anymore,” you respond. “which brings me to why i’m here. question about a new transfer.”

“which one?”

“last name black, first name sirius.”

she checks the roster for the name. “room nine. got in about half an hour ago.”

“nonviolent, right?”

you think you know the answer, but you want to make sure.

“absolutely. still in a right state, though.”

“i know. i’m here to give him something, an… uh, _alternate form of treatment_. y’know, as an adjunct to what he’s already getting.”

talenti raises an eyebrow. “elaborate, if you will?”

you give her the basic rundown on the whole thing, explain why you think it’ll be therapeutic, and why the risk is essentially nonexistent. she waves you off, but since she doesn’t stop you, you assume you’ve been given her blessing.

you stroll down to room nine and knock on the door.

“if you’re another one come to interview me, go away,” comes the weak response from the other side.

you sigh and wrench the door open.

“i thought i told you bloody healers to sod off!” he shouts.

a rather burly mediwizard runs over to assist you, but you give him the all-clear. he shoots you a skeptic look and you scowl until he gets the message. then, you walk inside, and shut the door most of the way behind you, casting a silencing charm on the doorway.

“yeah, well, i’m not here to interview you, am i?” you point out. “technically already did that.”

“back to torment me again?” he wants to know. “easy prey and all?”

“unfortunately, no.”

you drop the bundle under your arm on his bedside table and unwrap it. then, you unwrap his records. you’d grabbed every single one you could find. he stares at you with soft wonder.

“if you find a way to off yourself with this record player, i’ll bring you back as an inferius and kill you again, so help me, black.”

his expression is utterly inscrutable. you kind of want to hit him for it. you’ve kind of wanted to hit him all day. you’ll wait until he gets out of here, approximately four days from now, or whenever the hell regulus’s wake is.

reggie black, star seeker. the one slytherin in the class of 1979 - along with leo - to whom you never had to assign a single detention. and now they’re both dead.

mouth set in one grim, thin line, you blink away tears. sirius does not miss this.

 _“i won’t,”_ he promises.

you load the white album into the phonograph on his instruction. the two of you stay there, you standing, he lying down, and listen. in terms of muggle music, you never much cared for pink floyd (too weird), but you always did like the beatles.

you stand there with your eyes closed, leaning against the adjacent wall, and start to drift off. if you stay still enough, you can almost hear them all, everyone you’ve ever lost.

“don’t you want to go home and get some actual sleep, healer shacklebolt?” black asks you, maybe half an hour later.

“i can sleep when i’m dead,” you deadpan, before remembering where you are and what’s happened. 

perhaps not the best thing to say under the circumstances.

black doesn’t seem to take any offense, he just laughs bitterly.

you’re going to have to tell augustine about this at some point, whenever the hell you go back home. he may or may not have a nervous breakdown. you don’t think he will, but you’re not sure.

after this, you’re going to have to walk down to the venoms and poisons ward, stop lily from grinding up doxy wings or whatever she’s doing, and tell her exactly where sirius black is. you may or may not have to stop her from going upstairs to punch him in the face, but you don’t think she’ll try that. you think she’ll just cry, which is a scarier proposition.

why is it always down to you to tell everyone everything?

 _“revolution 9″_ concludes. black sighs.

“i want to listen to _‘wish you were here’_ ,” he tells you.

you shake your head.

“it’ll just depress you, sirius.”

that has to be the first time in history that you’ve actually addressed him by his given name while sober.

he gestures to himself, to his bed, to this room.

“i’m already depressed.”

point well taken. you put in the record for him, and leave to tell lily what happened just as  _“shine on, you crazy diamond”_ starts to play.


End file.
